With the rapid development of Internet and the popularity of large-screen multifunctional mobile phones, there appeared a large number of mobile data and multimedia services and a variety of high bandwidth multimedia services, such as video conference, TV broadcast, video on demand, advertisements, online education and interactive games, etc., which not only meet the growing service requirements of mobile users, but also bring a new service growth point to mobile operators. These mobile data and multimedia services demand multiple users receive same data simultaneously, and have characteristics such as large data quantity, long duration, and sensitive latency, etc., compared with common data services.
In order to use mobile network resources effectively, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) proposes a MBMS service, which is a technology of transmitting data from one data source to multiple targets, to achieve share of network (including core network and access network) resources and improve the utilization of the network resources (especially air interface resources). The MBMS defined by 3GPP can not only implement plain text, low-rate message type multicast and broadcast, but also implement high-speed multimedia service broadcast and multicast, to provide a variety of abundant video, audio and multimedia services, which undoubtedly conforms to the trend of the development of future mobile data and provides better business prospects for the development of 3G.
The characteristics of MBMS are large service data quantity, long duration when a terminal receives data, and constant average data rate. The above characteristics determine that both scheduling of MBMS services and control signaling configuration are semi-statically configured, i.e., both scheduling information of the MBMS services and MCCH information remain unchanged for a long time, and thus a network side transmits the unchanged MCCH information as a transmission period of MCCH information arrives. However, the MCCH information is transmitted continuously, because there may be access of a new user at any time. At present, in order to assist the terminal in saving power when receiving the MCCH information, periodic transmission of the MCCH information is proposed. Particularly, the MCCH information has repetition periods and modification periods. A modification period generally is an integral multiple of the repetition period, and one modification period contains a plurality of repetition periods. As each repetition period in the modification period arrives, the network side transmits the MCCH information once. The MCCH information transmitted each time is same, and updated MCCH information is allowed to be transmitted only when the modification period arrives. Thus, the number of times that the terminal receives the MCCH information can be reduced to implement power saving to some extent.
On the other hand, some companies hope to assist the terminal in avoiding receiving the MCCH information which is not updated by introducing a MBMS notification mechanism. The MBMS notification mechanism can also implement the function of the modification period of the MCCH information, and even does better than the modification period does. For example, it allows the MCCH information to be modified more flexibly without bringing receiving delay of the terminal and delay of service scheduling. However, considering the process and time of the R9 protocol, and because there has been no perfect notification mechanism yet at present in the LTE R9 protocol, the MBMS notification mechanism has not been determined to be used in the R9 protocol at present. Some companies believe that the MBMS notification mechanism can be introduced in later versions.
At present, the MBMS notification information may also be referred to as a MBMS notification message, and accordingly, a MCCH information update indication mechanism may also be referred to as a MBMS notification mechanism. The present invention will be described using the MBMS notification information and the MBMS notification mechanism.